


We Sleep In Pairs

by coloursflyaway



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: First Kiss, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9596165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: The sky is blue above him when Dirk opens his eyes, Black Wing has set him free, and there is just one way for him to get back home, to Farah, to Amanda. To Todd.He walks.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry that this is kind of OOC, but unfortunately I am not good at writing funny things, and therefore not really made for this fandom, I guess.  
> What I am good at though is long sentences and very little story that ends in a gay kiss though. So have that instead.

The sky is blue above him when Dirk opens his eyes, the sun too bright and the ground too hard, unforgiving. He allows himself a few moments of just lying there, trying to figure out how he got to wherever he is, and then gets up with shaking limbs, stumbling, looking around. There are trees around him, moss covering the rocks he woke up on, shrubbery and grass scattered across the scenery in the most confusing patterns.  
Dirk has never been here before, but there is a path right next to him. He walks.

 

In front of him, the universe is spread out in a mess of colours, shapes and sounds, and yet, when Dirk stops, it’s to watch some birds fly past him. They are chirping, their song a cheerful one, although they look darker against the bright sky as they should when Dirk raises a hand to his eyes to shield them from the still-bright sunlight.  
One of the birds twirls through the air, an unnecessary flourish, and Dirk smiles softly, watches it disappear, before he takes another step, than another. He doesn’t know how long he has been walking already, just knows that his feet are getting sore, and that the thin t-shirt he woke up in is not doing enough to keep him warm, but there is nothing to be done against it.

Wherever he is, it’s not where he should be; where he should be is Seattle, is the Ridgely, is his flat. Is maybe, just maybe, at Todd’s side.  
So he takes another step.  
And walks.

 

There is a creek that Dirk almost stumbles into, the soles of the unfamiliar shoes he is wearing slipping on the damp ground, the slick stones. The sun is still shining, even if a lot less brightly now that it has passed its zenith, and Dirk crouches down to take a few sips of water.  
It’s cold, numbs his tongue and hurts his teeth; he can feel it travel down his throat and takes another drink, another, because the water washes away some of the fatigue that has settled behind his eyelids, has made blinking an almost impossible task. He needs it too, because his stomach is rumbling, growling, and his tongue swollen with dehydration.

Faintly, Dirk wonders if they have left him here to set him free, or watch him die.

Although he should continue walking, he sits down, wetness seeping into the fabric of his trousers, making the cool air a little less bearable still. He takes another sip of water and feels his treacherous eyelids drooping, dimming down the world around him to blackness with every, longer-lasting blink.  
Usually, there is colour waiting for him behind them, dreams and shapes and impossibly-explained hunches queuing up to be explored, but there is nothing now, and Dirk cannot remember the last time anything like this happened. Maybe never before.  
It might be another thing they took from him, just like his clothes, the memories of what feels like an entire winter passing; what they want with his own little figments of imagination and cosmic interconnectedness, Dirk cannot fathom, and right now, doesn’t know if he wants to. He thinks of the t-shirt he should be wearing, black and white, a piece of clothing not to be shot in, even if it is decorated with a skeleton, drinks another handful of water, enough to make his mouth ache and prickle. Sighs and gets up. And walks.

 

He follows the creek, because it is as good a plan as any, and even if the universe has never protected him, Dirk trusts it enough to know that it will lead him where he needs to be. Hopefully the universe and he hold similar views on where that place should be.  
Although he slips from time to time, lands on his backside more often than he’d care to admit and knows he will make it home battered and bruised, it is nicer to walk along the riverbed than aimlessly through the woods, hoping to somehow get un-lost.

From time to time, Dirk can still hear birds chirping, almost as if they were trying to tell him something, and he listens, listens, listens, and cannot understand a single thing, not even when one of them flies down and perches on his shoulder. It’s a small thing, brown and grey, with silken feathers and a touch of red around its dark beak and eyes.  
“Hello, friend”, Dirk mutters softly as not to disturb it, realise a second too later that those were the first words he said since he woke up. The bird doesn’t understand their significance, just cocks its head and chirps in response.  
Dirk has worked with less response before.  
“Will you help me find my way home?”, he asks his new-found, feathery friend, who hops a few centimetres to the right at the sound of Dirk’s voice, then hops back. “You see, I am quite lost here, and seem to have misplaced my assistant. Not that I am suggesting you take over his role, but maybe you could act as a temporary stand-in. It’s not as challenging as it might sound, don’t worry.”

The bird chirps and Dirk is just trying to find a name to call the bird, now that they might be colleagues, but before he can decide – it should start with a T, he thinks, maybe Theodore would work– it chirps another time, spreads his wings and flies away.  
There are a few seconds in which Dirk can still see it, a blurred spot of colour moving between dark green leaves and brown wood, and then it’s gone.  
Maybe fitting, Dirk thinks; if his heart feels a bit too large and a lot too empty for his chest, lifting him off the ground and dragging him down at the same time, no one needs to know.  
He walks.

 

The creeks leads him to a town with a name as strange as it befits the situation, but in Washington, USA still. It’s a relief, because Dirk knows he can walk for another day, maybe two, maybe three, but he wouldn’t be able to walk home from Tianjin, China, no matter how much he’d wish to.  
At the side of the row, a telephone booth is waiting for him, looking as worn and battered as Dirk feels, a far better fit than a small cheerful bird could ever be. He steps inside; a few coins are lying on the sideboard next to the oversized telephone, laid out for him to find.

Dirk offers the universe a relieved smile, because it’s as much as he can muster up right now with exhaustion tearing at every of his cells, picks them up. It’s not much, hardly enough to make more than one call, but then again, who does Dirk even have to call?  
He’d rather jump off every cliff with his eyes wide-open than see Friedkin again, there is no family he has left, there’s just one person he can think of he could call. One person, one call.  
The universe is nothing but resourceful, but Dirk has always known that.

He’s got the first coin lined out with the appropriate slot already when his brain decides to alert him of a fact he had almost forgotten: he might have a person to call, even if just one, but no number.  
Up until now, there had never been a reason to memorise it, and so Dirk’s mind is uncomfortably blank when he tried to think of the appropriate digits. He tries, though, for far longer than he should and until he can feel a now-familiar panic clutching at his throat. But just as familiar as the panic is, is willing it down, which is just what Dirk does, wills it down and gathers his coins together. The universe will lead him where he needs to go, that much hasn’t changed.  
The coins clank against each other when he stuffs them into his pockets, a sound almost too loud in the middle of the night in a town he has never before set foot in, but Dirk ignores it, and walks.

 

By the time the sun comes up again, Dirk has found a vending machine and spent all his found coins on chocolate bars, which help with the rumbling of his stomach. His feet aren’t hurting, but that’s because he cannot feel them anymore. He tries not to think too much about that fact, especially since he has found a Highway that seemed right somehow when he first set eyes on it, a feeling that was proved correct by a road sign Dirk saw an hour or two later.  
_Seattle_ , it said among a bunch of other names, a single word that suddenly held so much meaning, no count of miles, but a general direction at least. It’s enough for Dirk.  
It’s still early enough that there aren’t many cars driving past him, but he still keeps his distance; it would do no good to anyone if he managed to get run over by a car. At least that is what he thinks.  
And it seems that the universe doesn’t want to make this easy for him, since he spent an hour at least trying to hitchhike to no avail.

There are no more trees around him, no birds flying past, no creek to drink from, but somewhere along the way, Dirk finds a bottle of water that is still half-full, and it’s enough for now. Has to be.  
After all, he’s not home yet, that’s something the universe and he seem to agree on.  
And although he can hardly lift his feet anymore, he walks.

 

When he wakes up, the sky is grey with clouds, and for a moment, maybe two, Dirk panics. It’s too familiar, and he doesn’t remember, just like the last time, until he does. Remembers stumbling and falling, even more pain in his knees, his elbows, a bruise on his right cheek from when his tired limbs were too slow to shield his face.  
Remembers trying to get up and walk, and remembers his body not cooperating. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but that he doesn’t have to, since the sun was just starting to set on a cloudless horizon when he fell and now everything is dreary and grey, but it’s definitely day.

There are still a few sips of water in the bottle next to him, and Dirk allows himself to drink it all, because his throat is parched, feels like sandpaper every time he swallows. His stomach gives a defeated rumble, but there is nothing Dirk could do to help.  
It takes more strength to get up than it should, but he manages in the end, stretches and sighs and looks at the road ahead. The Highway seems to go on forever, and this is a kind of torture Dirk is not familiar with, a feeling that is a novelty of its own.  
But somewhere, or at least he hopes so, someone is waiting for him, or at least hasn’t completely forgotten about him yet: Farah who’s brilliant and could be so much better still, if she’d let herself, Amanda, who’s clever and witty and stronger than she seems to realise, and Todd. Todd with his too-blue eyes, who cannot forgive himself and yet forgave Dirk, who cares more than he seems to realise and want to, who tries so hard to become better than he is and yet is the last person to see it. Todd, who is and was and will be hurt and yet somehow got and gets and will get up again, bruised and battered and bitter, but alive anyway. Todd, who smiles sometimes and makes it hard for Dirk to breathe, Todd, who might be a hundred miles away from perfect, but weird and broken in places and ways that seem to complement Dirk’s quirks and wounds and flaws.

The thought – the thoughts – make Dirk smile, although he’s still not-quite lost, hungry and tired and dehydrated, because none of that matters as much as the fact that his home is people now, that he has someone to _come home to_. Someone who won’t leave.  
He pins that thought, that mental image to the front of his mind, a constant reminder of what he has to lose. And walks.

 

It’s just when his thirst has become almost unbearable that the sky opens up above him, rain coming down like a barely-concealed flood, fat drops soaking Dirk from head to toe. He’s shivering within seconds, shirt clinging to his chest, but throws his head back anyway, mouth open to catch as much rain on his tongue as he can.  
The process is slow, but it works, the cold helping with washing away at least part of the fatigue that seems to have settled permanently in Dirk’s bones as well. He must look like a lunatic to anyone passing in their cars, that has never bothered him before.    
For a moment, he considers trying to hitchhike once more, but he can see the universe clearly sometimes, a struggle and dance of what-ifs and if-thens, and for some reason, he is not meant to have someone drive him, and knows better than, is too tired to argue.  
So he doesn’t stick out his thumb when a car passes him, but opens his mouth wider, closes his eyes, and walks.

 

He leaves his Highway on a hunch, just like he does most things, turns left and walks.

 

It’s next to a lake that the sole of his left shoe wears through. He doesn’t even notice at first, because after several blissful hours of numbness, his feet are aching somewhat fierce, and they haven’t been anything but cold in what feels like centuries, so it’s only when he steps onto wet grass that he notices.  
The sensation takes a few moments to catch up, when it does, Dirk stops dead in his track, then plops onto the ground. It’s ungraceful, but there is no one to criticise, no one to impress after all. He doesn’t dare to take off his shoes, just because he knows by now that putting them on again will be all the more painful, so he just twists and shifts until he can inspect what is wrong with it: right above the ball of his foot, there’s a hole as big as the pad of his thumb, the sole next to it worn paper thin.  
It figures, a part of Dirk’s mind thinks, that they wouldn’t provide him with proper shoes, just like they didn’t provide him with anything else.

He should get up, because every moment he spends on the ground means he’ll arrive back home a moment later, but he cannot bring himself to, not when the ground feels so surprisingly comfortable, the grass smells so inviting. Nonetheless, he makes a half-hearted attempt to push himself up, only to fall back onto the ground within a second’s time. Maybe it’s the universe trying to tell him something.  
Maybe he’s too tired to care.

This time, when he falls asleep, it’s voluntarily, and that might be what makes all the difference, because it’s no deep, exhausted sleep, which feels more like passing out than anything else, instead, Dirk dreams.  
He often dreams, but not like this, just jumbled chaos of events and memories and possible, probable futures; this dream is something completely different. It’s soft where the usual ones are hectic, warm and mellow in a way Dirk hasn’t known before.

_He’s back home, where he belongs, in his flat, cuddled in a blanket with a cup of vanilla chai in his hands. The TV is playing, but he’s not watching it, not really.  
Outside, there is screaming and clanking, and when he looks out of the window, the sky is a dark purple, but that seems to be the normal state of things, as far as Dirk is aware of. The tea is pleasantly warm when he takes a sip of it, with just enough sugar and a hint of cinnamon, and Dirk sighs to himself, almost happy. There is something missing, though, something he cannot quite pinpoint, at least until there is a loud bang sounding from the kitchen, followed by muffled cursing. _

_“Is everything alright?”, Dirk calls out, feeling concerned and fondly excited at the same time. He lifts a corner of the blanket, folds it back, just as Todd appears in the doorway, a cup of coffee in one hand, the other holding a copy of War and Peace in Swedish._  
_“Yeah, sure. I just set off the shark kitten again.” He gives Dirk a smile, one he has never seen before and yet knows that it’s just for him, that it’s a small part of Todd he owns and won’t ever give back. “It’s fine now, though.”_  
 _“Oh, good.”_  
 _It’s the most natural thing in the world to scoot over and let Todd sit down next to him, hooking one leg over Dirk’s and making him feel warm and uncommonly fuzzy inside._  
 _“Let’s stay in tonight”, Todd suggests and Dirk nods, watches the other as he opens his book._  
 _“I didn’t know you knew Swedish”, he comments, then settles back to take another drink from his tea._  
 _“I don’t”, Todd answers and smiles that smile again. Reaches out and pries one of Dirk’s hands away from his cup to lace their fingers together. “But you do.”_

He wakes up slowly, almost lazily, one hand clutching the other and a smile on his lips that feels as familiar as new. It’s not meant for the sky and yet he smiles it up at the sun peeking out from behind the clothes for a few moments longer.  
The fuzzy feeling still hasn’t vanished, although he never had Todd’s hand to hold, although his legs are just tangled around each other, and Dirk tries his best to keep it right where it is, next to the memory of Todd’s smile and Amanda’s laugh and Farah’s voice, pinned right to the front of his consciousness. Maybe it’s what makes it so much easier to get up this time, although Dirk cannot rule out that it is the few hours of sleep he managed to get.

His legs still feel weak, his feet still hurt and the hole in his shoes hasn’t been fixed overnight, but his heart is lighter than it has been in days, perhaps longer, depending on whatever happened in the weeks, or months he forgot.  
The sun is shining and his mouth is parched, and Dirk breathes in deeply, smells grass and exhaust fumes and a new day. He walks.

 

As time passes, it gets harder and harder not to think. At first, it was easy – walking and being awake and trying to figure out how he got here and just why he couldn’t remember anything after Friedkin had found him had been more than enough to keep him occupied, then, it was the exhaustion that kept him from thinking at all, but now… after he has slept, after that dream, and after finding almost an entire litre of orange juice abandoned on a bench in front of a roadhouse, it’s getting more difficult.  
Dirk walks, and his thoughts, those treacherous little things, keep wandering and always, without fail, land where Todd is. Where Dirk thinks Todd might be, should be. It’s a thought laced with a new kind of terror: He doesn’t know if Todd is fine. In fact, he doesn’t even know if Todd is still alive.

Of course, Dirk tries his best to tell himself that there is no other way but for his best friend to be perfectly well and healthy, the terrifying truth is that he is lying to himself. There is every reason to believe Todd to be alright; there is every reason to believe him being tortured and imprisoned.  

And yet, no matter how mind-numbingly horrible those thoughts are, they are not the only ones. There are others, happier ones, which nonetheless leave Dirk shaken somehow, in a completely different way. Thoughts about when they first met, Dirk so lonely and desperate for any, for all kind of friendship, Todd at what must have felt like the end of the world to him back then. About how the younger version of him had been so hopeful after hearing he would have a friend, so elated and excited, how he had seen Todd and had known that his older self had been right.  
About how when they had gone back in time and he had uttered those fateful words, they had felt twice as true. About how he can picture his life without Todd, but doing so gets more difficult with every day that passes. And about how Dirk hasn’t had a friend before and yet knows that this cannot be how friendship feels.

Not that thoughts like this amount to anything at all; they’re useless, painfully so, which doesn’t stop them from appearing from time to time, unbidden, unprompted, unwanted. Dirk tries to think of something else, about Farah, who is a little bit like he used to want to be when he was still growing up, about Amanda, even about the Rowdy 3, all four of them. But the thoughts about Todd stay, even as he changes roads again, walks past another lake.  
The universe leaves him some more coins on the street and he uses them to buy three chocolate bars and a large bottle of water at the next small store he finds, ignoring the looks the girl behind the counter gives him. He cannot blame her, because he knows he looks like hell, smiles at her twice as brightly to make up for it and wishes her the loveliest of days.  
She still doesn’t seem impressed, like she has half a mind to call either an ambulance or the police, so Dirk leaves, eats his snacks, and walks.

 

When Dirk sees the sign – _Seattle, 10 miles_ – he’s barely able to hold back the tears threatening to spill down his cheeks. He’s so tired he can hardly keep his eyes open anymore, every single muscle in his body seems to hurt, from head to toe. If this is what dying feels like, he catches himself thinking, then the actual event of death cannot be much worse.  
He walks faster.

 

The Ridgely looks like it always has, red and white brick, cigarette butts and empty beer cans littering the streets, one or two windows broken, their frames splintered. It looks familiar, it looks like home, and the sight paints a smile onto Dirk’s lips, although he can hardly move his muscles enough to make it up the few steps to the front door. He’s in pain, running on less than fumes and knows it, but none of that matters because he’s here now.  
He’s home. 

Leaning against the wall in an attempt to somehow keep himself upright, he reaches out with shaking fingers, finds a small, dirty white strip of paper stuck next to one of the doorbells.  
_Brotzman_ it says, and suddenly the whole universe is laid out in front of Dirk, with all its colours, everything aligned perfectly, because this is right, this is how it’s supposed to be.  
The smile is still stuck fast to his lips, and Dirk rings the bell. And falls.

 

The ceiling is white when Dirk opens his eyes, it’s white and it’s there, a ceiling, meaning he’s in a room, a house. It takes a few moments for the information to sink in, to become more than just a random conglomerate of facts and more of a personal, intimate knowledge.  
He’s _home_ , he’s made it.    
Dirk tries to sit up, because lying still has never been his forte, but his body won’t allow it, moves a few inches before sinking back onto the mattress. It’s frustrating but maybe, Dirk figures, what he deserves for treating it like this, so for now, he settles on turning his head slightly, just enough to see his surroundings.  
It’s not his flat, which isn’t very surprising, but Todd’s, which is just as unsurprising, but still makes Dirk’s heart flutter in frequencies it should not even know of. They must have fixed it since Dirk… vanished, because apart from the odd scuffmark on the walls, there are no signs of the Rowdy 3’s wreckage left, every broken piece replaced with something new, something prettier.  
Dirk likes it, the dark brown wood and white walls, different shades of green and blue and grey mixed into it; it looks very much like a flat Todd lives in should look. Cosy, but understated, calm.  
Like home.

And it’s only when Dirk turns his head a little more, enough to make out the tasteful blueish-grey carpet covering the floor, the books stacked on the small coffee table, that he sees another thing, the most beautiful of them all.  
Todd is slumped in an armchair at the foot of the bed Dirk is currently occupying, his eyes closed and his breathing deep and even, dead to the world, but waiting for Dirk to wake up.  
He looks almost like Dirk remembers, too, brown hair and fair skin, a hint of stubble making his jaw look even sharper. He’s beautiful.

Part of Dirk wants to wake him, just to see the other, his best friend, smile, but in the end, he cannot bring himself to, not when there are dark circles under Todd’s eyes, when he looks thinner than he did before, worn in an uncomfortable way. Another part of Dirk, one he won’t ever admit to having, hopes that it’s because Todd was worried about him.  
The larger, largest part though, is just happy to be home and to watch Todd sleep.

 

He wakes again, without knowing when he fell asleep, but this time fully aware of where he is. Todd is not there anymore, though, instead there is murmuring coming from the kitchen; it still takes Dirk an embarrassingly long time to make his eyes focus on the figures half hidden by pillars and a new potted plant.  
It's all three of them, all his friends, and Dirk’s heart speeds up and swells at the same time, a fascinating, if odd sensation, because they’re all still alive, and haven’t forgotten him.  
Sitting up is still too big a feat, so Dirk stays where he is instead, smiling softly as he watches Amanda gesture wildly, Farah nodding along with her words.

“- it’s been more than a year, Todd”, she exclaims, louder suddenly, loud enough for Dirk to hear; the words hit him like a blow to the chest, a physical injury. “We need to get him to the hospital! Who knows what they have done to him, or how he escaped! I know it’s a risk, but you know what’s also a risk? Leaving him here without knowing if they injected him with some freaky poison, or if he’s got some internal bleeding or whatever. I know Dirk’s tough, he’s taken two arrows and lived, but this is different. We’ve just got no idea what happened.”  
There’s a pause, a very much needed one on Dirk’s part, because a year, more than that even? The few months Dirk had expected had seemed like a lifetime, but this is worse, this is _the_ worst.

He must have made a sound, most likely a distressed one, because suddenly all three of them turn around, looking at him, some mixture of shock and relief painted across their features in big, bold strokes. It’s Amanda, who moves first, practically flings herself through the room and down on the floor next to him, smaller hands cradling one of his own and holding it tightly.  
“Oh my God, Dirk, you’re awake”, she breathes out, words jumbled together, and Dirk can only nod mutely, overwhelmed and still shaken at the same time. “We were so worried, we looked everywhere for you, but we just couldn’t find you – we thought maybe they had – but they haven’t, because you’re okay, you’re really okay – “

She seems like she is about to cry so Dirk gives her a smile, or at least tries to; it doesn’t have the desired effect. Before he knows it, there are tears spilling down her cheeks, but she smiles just the same, a shaky little curl of lips.  
While Amanda was talking, the other two must have approached as well, for when Dirk looks up, Farah and Todd are watching them, both with a smile of their own on their faces.  
“She’s right, you know”, Farah says after a few breathless seconds, “We were so worried they had done something to you. Well. More than kidnap you, I mean. They didn’t do that, did they?”

It takes a few moments for Dirk’s still-tired brain to understand what Farah is asking, even longer for his lips and tongue to remember how to move to reply.  
“Like what exactly?”, he asks, doesn’t quite answer after all. His eyelids are already drooping, exhaustion reappearing. “In fact, you don’t need to answer that, I can’t remember.”  
“Can’t remember what?”  
“Anything.”  
Obviously, it’s not the answer the others were hoping for, judging by the tightening of Amanda’s hands around his, by the frown appearing on Farah’s beautiful face.  
“Anything?”, she asks, and Dirk nods.

Every blink is getting longer, the bed is too comfortable, and Dirk is too weak to fight it when sleep beckons him closer once more.  
“I’m sorry”, he mumbles, before he allows his eyes to stay closed.  
His last thought before he drifts off is that Todd hasn’t said a single word.

 

The other is there when Dirk wakes up for the third time though, sitting in the same armchair as the first time, but this time awake, a book in his hands, and startling the moment Dirk does as much as shift.  
His eyes must have gotten even bluer in the year or so Dirk was away.

“Hi”, he tries after a moment or two, because Todd doesn’t seem inclined to speak, tries to sit up, only to wince and fall back down onto the bed. He never knew a single body could hurt so much.  
“Hey, Dirk.” The answer takes a bit too long, but it comes and accompanied by a smile that steals at least half of Dirk’s breaths right from his lungs, and that’s enough for now. “How are you feeling?”  
“Good”, Dirk replies, but more out of habit than because it’s the truth. “No, actually, I don’t. Better, though. Hungry.”  
“Want me to make you something?”, Todd asks, adds, “Or rather, heat it up. Farah brought over some soup earlier.”  
He doesn’t say that Farah made the soup with Dirk in mind, but he doesn’t have to, and that makes it almost better.  
“I’d like that, yes. Thank you, Todd”, he answers, and basks in the warmth that suddenly shines out of the other’s smile when he says Todd’s name.

 

“How did you even get here?”, Todd asks when he hands Dirk the bowl of soup, looking slightly unwilling at letting go, although Dirk is absolutely strong enough to feed himself, even if he needed help to sit up. His stomach gives a rather embarrassingly loud growl, but Todd, being the wonderful best friend he is, doesn’t mention it.  
“I walked”, Dirk tells him before digs in, reminding himself to take it slow between the first spoon of blessedly warm soup and the second, the second and the third. It might just be the best thing he has ever tasted.  
“What do you mean, you walked?”, Todd asks, brow furrowing like he doesn’t quite understand what it is Dirk is trying to tell him. “From where?”

“Just that”, Dirk replies, although it’s hard to do so and not just concentrate on the soup. “I walked. From where, I have no idea. Some kind of forest, then a town, then a highway, then… streets. A lot of streets.”  
“How… how long have you been walking?”, Todd asks and his voice sounds like it’s made of fine glass, ready to splinter at any given moment.  
It’s a question Dirk doesn’t quite know the answer to, so he shrugs, eats another spoonful, before he says, “Days. I don’t know how many. Two or three or four, something like that.”  
“ _Oh_ ”, Todd answers, and his voice makes Dirk look up, although his stomach protests, longs for sustenance. But with that one, single sound, Todd’s voice bursts apart, breaks, the sound seeming to echo in the blue of his eyes, the upturn of his eyebrows.  
“It – it wasn’t that bad”, Dirk tries, tongue tripping over the words, because he tries to spit them out so quickly. “It was less than a week, definitely less than a week. Nice – scenery too, sometimes. Did I mention the lakes?”

It doesn’t seem to work; if anything, Todd looks more stricken, fingers pulling at a thread hanging from the sleeve of his shirt.  
“I mean, I made it back home, that’s what counts, right?”, Dirk tries again, shoves a quick spoon of soup into his mouth before smiling as brightly as he possibly can. “In one piece too, as far as I can tell. So everything’s good. Really.”  
Todd doesn’t seem convinced, but at least he takes a deep breath, releases it shakily and looks at Dirk, really looks, like he is seeing him for the very first time.  
“Home, huh?”, he asks, and there is no smile on Todd’s lips, so Dirk gives him one instead.  
“Well, obviously. Where else would my home be, if not here?”

 

Todd helps him to the bathroom after Dirk has eaten three bowls of soup and managed to make the other laugh at least once, leaves reluctantly after Dirk has insisted that he can shower on his own. He might have exaggerated his confidence in said ability slightly, but that doesn’t matter, because he manages to get out of his clothes, every movement easier than the one before as his muscles remember how moving works.  
And the hot water pouring down on him is worth almost anything the universe could throw at him, washing away the last bit of weariness with the grime and sweat and crushed blades of grass still stuck in his hair. What makes it even better is the smell of Todd’s shower gel enveloping him.

 

When he finally leaves the bathroom, hair still damp and curling at the edges, Todd sitting on the bed Dirk has almost started to think of his, even if he has no claim on it, staring at the floor.  
He’s still picking at that one thread hanging lose from his shirt sleeve.

“I promise I won’t lose this shirt. Or get shot in it”, Dirk says, even if only to break the silence before it has any chance to become uncomfortable, gestures at his black-and-white-clad chest. “I know you don’t have many left.”  
Todd looks up at him, as if Dirk violently forced him back to reality from wherever his thoughts had taken him, blue eyes wide and startled.  
“We looked for you”, he says and looks back down, Dirk doesn’t understand, but knows instinctively that it is important; nothing else would explain the hint of desperation clinging to Todd’s voice. “For months. Longer than that, a year at least - we looked for you, but it was like you had just…vanished.”  
Dirk wants to say something, that he knows that they looked, that he doesn’t blame them for not finding him, but Todd looks distraught enough to keep him from opening his mouth.

Between his fingers, the thread he is picking on, rips, and Todd tears it into smaller pieces still, lets them flutter to the ground. His fingers, though, continue to moving nervously, flitting across his thighs and knees, intertwining and untangling again.  
“I didn’t think we’d find you, not anymore, and I’m so sorry for that. We shouldn’t have stopped looking, _I_ shouldn’t have stopped looking. I should have known better. It’s _you_ , I should have known that you’d somehow – that they wouldn’t –“

His voice fades, and just when Dirk thinks that maybe it’s his turn to speak, Todd looks up and his eyes look different than they ever have before, still blue and impossibly so, still bright, but defiant and fond and fierce at the same time too. It almost hurts to look at them and yet Dirk cannot possibly tear his gaze away.

“After I told Amanda”, Todd starts and his voice is clear now, steady. Like this is a speech he has been meaning to give for weeks. Months. More than a year. “After I told her, I told our parents, and it was awful, but it was also… freeing. Because lying crushes something inside of you, slowly, so you don’t really notice it at first, only when it’s too late. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t let happen again, because it didn’t just almost ruined me, it almost ruined everything. And I told myself that when we’d find you, I’d – well. This is me. Being honest. For once in my life.”  
He takes a breath, a deep one, and Dirk’s heart is beating wildly, every possible horrifying scenario flitting through his mind. He has been left behind, lied to, betrayed often enough, he knows the feeling, and yet thinks that, if any of his worst assumptions is about to come true, it might be the straw to break him.

“I refused to move out of this place, although Farah bought me a new one. Far larger, far better, with warm water that always works and in a neighbourhood where you cannot watch three drug deals happening from your bedroom window at any given time”, Todd says, and makes no sense at all, at least not to Dirk. “But I didn’t want to leave this flat, because although I told myself that you were dead, had to be, really, part of me still… hoped. That you were somewhere out there, waiting to come back. Maybe even just as much as I was waiting for you. Have been waiting.”  
Todd sighs, and something spectacular, oh so rare happens:  the universe aligns perfectly once more, colours and shapes and figures becoming clear for a split second; just long enough for Dirk to take a glimpse. It’s a future made of soft blankets and vanilla chai and tangled feet under blankets, made of running and laughing and finding puzzle piece after puzzle piece, made of two people who somehow, in this mess of a world, found each other.

A glimpse, that’s all, but it changes something, everything, nothing at all; Dirk’s heart is overflowing with warmth and something else, something different and something so similar at the same time, and before he knows it, he’s moving.  
The mattress is soft when he sits down, and Todd looks at him like he just appeared out of thin air. Like he’s about to vanish just as quickly as he appeared.  
“What are you doing?”, he asks, and Dirk doesn’t have an answer for him, just a smile.  
“I _was_ waiting”, he tells him instead. “To come home to you. I might not remember everything that happened, but I don’t have to, to know that that is true. I was waiting the entire time. It’s why I only walked two days or three days or four, instead of a week. So I wouldn’t have to wait much longer.”

Without looking down, Dirk reaches out and knows that the universe will help him at least this time; it does, and his hand finds Todd’s instantly, intertwines their fingers. It’s not a perfect fit, Todd’s fingers shorter than his, calloused and rough around the knuckles, but it doesn’t have to be.  
They aren’t perfect people after all.  
“ _Oh_ ”, Todd says for the second time this day, and his voice still sounds like it’s about to splinter, but this time not from pain, but affection, wonder, and finally, understanding.

The word makes Dirk smile, a happy, content, loving thing, and with their hands still connected and a thousand possible futures merging to form a definite one in front of his eyes, he leans forward and kisses his smile onto Todd’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)


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